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Now that the semester is coming to a close, it’s time for us all to take a moment to reflect. It’s not hard for me to remember. I remember our first day like it was yesterday. I remember wandering aimlessly around campus, trying to find the fastest routes between classes. I remember walking into my dorm room for the first time. I remember the first time I went to Kerr at 2 A.M. But most importantly, I remember the first time I ever walked into my freshman seminar class. Little did I know this rag tag group of kids would not only become my friends, but that they’d become my second family.

Ivan? Man, what can I say about Ivan. That crazy kid was always BEGGING me to play Magic: The Gathering with him. I just never had the heart to tell him no. And Amber and DJ, my RoadTripNation group. I don’t think I could have asked for a better pair of sidekicks. Sometimes I made them call me Batman, just so they knew who was in charge. But even throughout all of that, I never lost sight of what was really important.

I guess you could say I’m somewhat of a success story. Most kids come on campus and lost sight of themselves. They forget who they are. Not me, no. I had the help of Ms. Pasquini, Erin, Adriene, and 20-something kids who believed in me. So in conclusion, I guess I really I have only one thing left to say…

I… I love… ugh, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry… and it’s just… I’ve always been sort of a hard ass about this kind of thing and I just… I just can’t…

I have to admit, before we discussed spirituality in class Monday, I had never really thought about it. Before, I had never considered myself spiritual. But now, I see the concept of spirituality in a new light. I’m not necessarily a firm believer in any world religion, but my spirituality is something else entirely. It’s how I perceive the world around me. It’s my code of ethics. My morals. The guidelines by which I live my life. So with that, I’d say my spirituality is important to me. But I have never been keen on the idea of religion.

In all honesty, I have no idea what “cultural” group I identify with. But for the sake of this assignment, I’m just going to pretend that it’s asking about my personal beliefs and how I view others who may not share the same ideologies as I do. Now first of all, I was born in a very, very down south Christian household. Both my parents are very religious people and I was brought up to attend church every Sunday. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas we’d travel to my Aunt’s house where we’d eat southern home cooked meals, watch football, play in the backyard, open presents, and do other family reunion type of stuff. My Uncle is the biggest country bumpkin I know. He always has his cowboy hat on, has country music blaring out of the back of his truck and is a very, very hard worker. The same goes for my dad, and a lot of my other male relatives.

Unfortunately, another common characteristic of this “down south hard workin’ man” stereotype is that, in short, they’re often very bigoted individuals. As someone who has grown up around these kind of people my entire life, I can say that for the most part, this is true. With that said, I don’t automatically assume every guy or girl with a cowboy hat on hates gay people or rallies at Tea Party meetings on the weekends. But I see this trait among a lot of my family members, and as someone who very much has developed their own beliefs and opinions, it has definitely set me apart from them. It doesn’t help that I went to high school with a lot of these kind of people as well, which only served to reinforce that stereotype into my head.

The “Did You Know?” video was quite an eye-opener for me. I had no idea how high the population in China actually was. The fact that it will soon be the number one English speaking language in the world definitely took me back a little bit. I also had no idea that India had such a high population with high IQ’s. The fact that they have more honors kids than America has kids also really surprised me. The video showed me our world really is a lot bigger than I had previously thought.

Another thing that really made me think was how most of the in-demand jobs of the future probably don’t even exist yet. That’s really amazing when you think of how fast our civilization is advancing technologically. Not only that but we’re also advancing our knowledge in every field, so much so that information we’re learning now might even be outdated in less than 4 years. It’s really mind boggling stuff.

The fact that Facebook, if it were country, would be the third largest country in the world is fascinating. It really sheds light on how fast social media is growing in use among todays generation. Twitter is growing rapidly as well, with people sending over 50 million tweets per day. After watching the entire video, I definitely have a new perspective on the world and how fast things are advancing. It will definitely help me to prepare my kids for the days ahead where anything is possible.

So I ended up taking the MBTI test two times. On the first test, I ended up getting ITSP and ITSJ on the second one. I’m not really sure how I feel about these results, as on the test a lot of the questions were very situational and I wasn’t really sure how to respond to each one. The test definitely emphasized the question on whether or not I like to plan things and be organized, or to be spontaneous, which are both things that really depend on the circumstances.

So naturally on the test I answered most of the questions with different answers which I think resulted in an inaccurate analyzation. So when I took the test a second time, I tried to make my answers more consistent, leaning more towards the side of having things planned and organized as I usually prefer events planned (but again that is still situational.) The results on that test were even more inaccurate, listing my top professions as a pilot, environmental engineer, infantry member and my favorite, power plant operator.

Sounds about right.

Obviously I have no real interest in any of these professions. So in the end, maybe I just don’t know myself well enough to answer these kind of test accurately, or the questions are just too situational for me to answer them correctly. Either way I am still very confused about what I want to do and unfortunately I think the test just made me even more stressed about making that decision by next semester (which I’ll have to do if I want to keep receiving my financial aid.) I just really don’t want to be one of those people that has to be in college longer than I intended because I switched majors 5 times, but as we get closer to the end of the semester that is definitely likely.